The '047 Application describes a method for organizing groups of moving vehicles into a local peer group (LPGs) by selecting one moving vehicle as a group header, maintaining the local peer group using the group header, and generating local routing information. The moving vehicles are adapted to route data using either a single hop or a multi-hop transmission. The '047 Application describes that specific intra-LPG routes are determined from a local routing table within each node or moving vehicle. The local routing table is created from information that is received by the node from other nodes within the LPG. The routing paths are continually updated. The size of a LPG is preset to ensure that the LPG is a management size. The size is preset based upon a hop count limit.
A network might contain multiple LPGs, where each LPG includes several moving vehicles. Messages are transmitted within a LPG, e.g. intra-LPG communication. However, other messages need to be transmitted between multiple LPGs, e.g. inter-LPG communication. These messages including, but not limited to, urgent road obstacle warning, intersection coordination, hidden driveway warning, lane-change or merging assistance must be able to be transmitted between the LPGs efficiently.
Performance requirements include low latency (on the order of 100 milli-seconds) and sustained throughput (or equivalently, the percentage of neighboring vehicles that successfully receive warning messages) in order to support various applications such as collision avoidance.
Therefore, there is a need for a method for transmitting between multiple local peer groups.